Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
India (Verifying All That the Indians Recount)
Account of Indian religion, philosophy, astronomy, literature and customs, written after al-Biruni had learned Sanskrit in the lands conquered by Mahmud of Ghazna: he quotes Indian texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali, compares their doctrines with Greek and Sufi ones, and sets out to report rather than refute.
Introduction
Al-Biruni completed his book on India – its full title means “Verifying all that the Indians recount, the reasonable and the unreasonable” – in Ghazna in 1030, after years spent in the lands of northwestern India conquered by Mahmud of Ghazna. In eighty chapters he treats the Hindu conception of God, the soul, liberation and rebirth, the castes, the sacred books, grammar and metrics, geography, chronology, astronomy and astrology, law and festivals. He works from Sanskrit sources, which he had learned to read with the help of pandits, and quotes the Bhagavad Gita, the Puranas, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra and the Samkhya. His stated aim is to report, not to refute: he compares Indian doctrines with those of the Greeks, especially Plato, and of the Sufis, and distinguishes learned from popular belief in each. Eduard Sachau edited the Arabic text in 1887 and translated it into English in 1888 as Alberuni’s India.
Read the full text
Free full text, often an older edition or translation
Connections
Builds on
- Yoga Sutrac. 400 · Patanjali
More works by al-Biruni
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made